How World Of Warcraft's Next Expansion Will Reference Destiny

The boys and girls at Blizzard Entertainment have decided to tip a nod in favor of Bungie's Destiny with their latest expansion for World of Warcraft. A number of items and a new NPC are designed to pay tribute to the console MMO from Bungie.

According to Polygon, Blizzard has a new NPC that will show up in the World of Warcraft: Legion expansion, the NPC is called Xur'ios, a play on the Xur NPC from Destiny. Both characters offer players rare and exotic weapons and items.

In the case of Destiny, Xur offers up unique weapons, armor and bonus items to help with leveling or farming for high-tier gear. For World of Warcraft, Xur'ios carries two types of items, a fixed selection of goods you can by at any time and random rare items that change up each day, some of the fixed items include a leather love seat recipe, a formula for Soul Fibril and a Straszan Mark technique. Each of these items will cost a Curious Coin, not unlike the strange coins you collect in Destiny.

Xur'ios gets really interesting with his variable wares. The NPC will carry random items that change up each day. According to Wowhead, some of these random items include the Arcadian War Turtle, the Boon of the Nether, and the Mote of Light.

Now, the funny thing about it is that some of these rare items are direct references to Destiny. For instance, Krota's Shield is a reference to Crota's End, the raid dungeon from the expansion Destiny: The Dark Below. And yes, Crota does have a field in the raid run. Another nod from Blizzard to Bungie comes in the form of Ingram's Puzzle... this relates to Engrams in Destiny, which you can collect and help upgrade and evolve your character.

Nevertheless, the most obvious nod from the upcoming expansion for World of Warcraft is Gjallar's "Horn". Now anyone who has played Bungie's sci-fi shooter has likely heard of the legendary rocket launcher called Gjallarhorn. It's a dangerous, bad mamma jamma that can wipe out anything in its path. It was previously removed from Destiny as a way to balance the game but it's also making a comeback in the upcoming Rise of Iron expansion, which is due for release on September 30th.

The Gjallar's "Horn" in World of Warcraft is a little bit different from the one in Destiny. It still fires a rocket propelled projectile at enemies, and it does up to 460,000 points worth of damage, but it can only be used once per hour and it only works outdoors on the Broken Isles. Also, you have to be level 110 or higher to use it. Don't worry, though, the World of Warcraft: Legion update will raise the level cap so you'll be able to make use of the explosive weapon.

You'll be able to get your hands on the rare items from Xur'ios the Vaultkeeper of the Void by collecting Curious Coins throughout the game, which randomly drop during quests.

You can look for Xur'ios and other Destiny references to appear in the upcoming expansion pack for World of Warcraft starting August 30th.